Newgate Market

“ After the fire of London, which afforded an opportunity of rendering the new streets more commodious than the old ones had been, it was ordered by act of parliament that Newgate market should be removed from the street, and a square was formed on the south side for that purpose, surrounded by decent houses. This square is 194 feet long from east to west, and 148 feet broad from north to south. In the middle is a market house, under which are vaults or cellars, and the upper part of the building is employed as a kind of warehouse for the fruiterers, and the keepers of green stalls by night. ”

“ No perfectly accurate account can be given of the number per annum of poultry, game, and wild birds which enter Leadenhall and Newgate markets; but the following estimate was handed to us by a dealer who turns over 100,000l. a year in this trade. As the list takes no account of the quantity which goes direct to the retailer, nor of the thousands sent as presents, it must fall short of the actual consumption:—
In addition to its dead game and wild fowl, Leadenhall market is quite a Noah’s ark of live animals. ”

“ These traders are a distinct class from the stick-sellers, and have a distinct class of customers. The sale is considerable; for to many the possession of a whip is a matter of importance. If one be lost or stolen, for instance, from a butcher’s cart at Newgate-market, the need of a whip to proceed with the cart and horse to its destination, prompts the purchase in the quickest manner, and this is usually effected of the street-seller who offers his wares to the carters at every established resort. ”

“ The buyers here are the larger class of dealers; the smaller ones go to the dead-meat market in Newgate-street, which is blocked up by them from four in the morning till breakfast-time. If we come here on a Friday, between ten and four, we shall find a market for the sale of horses and donkeys—a market much patronised by costermongers. Let us add, in conclusion, that the New Cattle-market bids fair to be as much of a nuisance as the old, and that, sooner or later, there must be a dead-meat market for London, and that alone ”

“ The yearly receipts at this market was as follows: 360,000 beef cattle, 36,000 calves, 1,900,000 sheep, and 37,650 pigs. Besides this vast amount of meat there was nearly as much more received at the Newgate, Leadenhall, and Whitechapel meat markets.
The other articles of food, brought to the London markets, are estimated by those who profess to have nearly accurate in [Pg 436] formation, as follows: Seven million head of game and poultry, six hundred and fifty million pounds of fish, two hundred and fifty million barrels of oysters, and two hundred and fifty million cubic feet of eggs. ”

“ Every consumer and dealer in the country was bare of supplies and a very active demand from all sources set in immediately.
When we abandoned the brokerage business to become importers and dealers, our relations with our London friends changed. We bought of them all that we imported and they sold to no other American firm. If they bought in this market, their orders came to us. With their movements we worked in sympathy. If they advanced the price in London we did the same in New York and vice-versa. ”

“ THE MARKET-PLACE The market-place, where the dealing in this mass of securities is carried on, is by no means of imposing appearance from the exterior point of view. Of all the Stock Exchanges, Bourses, and Bolsas throughout the country and the world, the London Stock Exchange makes, perhaps, the least exterior show. The tourist often seeks it in vain, and thousands of Londoners pass it every day without knowing that behind the suites of offices, with their Portland-stone walls relieved by granite, is hidden the mighty market-place. ”

“ The busiest time at the market is about six o’clock, when the costermongers surround Covent Garden with their barrows, and hundreds of street hawkers, with their hand-baskets and trays, come for their day’s supply. The same system of purchase is pursued here as at Billingsgate—the rich dealers buy largely and sell again, and the poorer club their means and divide the produce. The regular street vender who keeps his barrow, drawn by a donkey or a pony, looks down with a certain contempt upon the inferior hawkers, principally Irish. ”

“ By rapid degrees the American fluctuations become generally circulated; the market seems to be full of the little pink slips that come flying in at the hands of boys and clerks stationed in a line that stretches from the offices of the cable companies outside the House to the very heart of the Yankee Market in the Stock Exchange. ”

“ We enjoyed the confidence of the large importers and dealers and were in close touch with the consuming trade throughout the country. Our facilities for getting information as to stocks in the aggregate and individually were unequalled. The large consumers posted us in advance of what their requirements would be for certain periods. If the large city dealers were manipulating the market it was done through our office and we knew their plans. ”

“ The market advanced by leaps and bounds, until finally the price in London reached one hundred and sixty-seven pounds sterling per ton, with an equivalent value in all other markets. This represented an advance of more than one hundred per cent.
Then the members of the syndicate awakened from their pleasant dream to find a nightmare.
The hand of every man in the trade throughout the world was raised against them. They were in the meshes of an endless chain. For every ton they could sell they must buy five, or more, in order to sustain the price. ”

“ These little carts, drawn by a mule or the poorest of ponies, have been driven perhaps a dozen or fifteen miles, bringing to market loads, a dozen of which would scarcely equal what a New-York farmer, or a New-England market-gardener often heaps upon a single wagon.
In the markets, business is transacted on the same petty scale. You see a great number of dealers, and extraordinary 179throngs of purchasers, considering the little that appears to be sold. Not every producer has so much even as an antiquated mule-cart. Many come to market with what they can carry on their backs or in their hands. ”

“ We struggle by Banks and come into the cosmopolitan waters of the Foreign Market, where may be heard half a dozen different languages all being spoken at the same time. The Foreign Market is in shape like a sleeve, and the cuff end of it leads out to the main door of the Stock Exchange in Throgmorton Street, so that we have traversed, roughly speaking, the north-west quarter of the Stock Exchange. ”

“ One day father and I went to Detroit with a large load of oats. We drove on to the market and offered them for sale; eighteen cents a bushel was the highest offer we could get for them and father sold them for that price. We fattened some pork, took it to Detroit and sold it for twenty shillings per hundred. In days back, father had often paid one shilling a pound for pork and brought it home on his arm, in a basket over two miles. Now we were able to sell more than we had to buy. The balance of trade was in our favor and, of course, we were making some money ”

“ He had a warehouse in which space was sometimes let for the storage of other people's goods, but which also served to hold country produce whenever, in view of a probable rise in the market, he chose to enter the field as a cash buyer in competition with the "storekeepers," who bought only in exchange for goods. ”

“ When we consider that twenty-five churches stood in or about the great market, and that they were all presumably more ancient than the Conquest, we may deduce the fact that the stalls very early became closed shops, and in many cases permanent houses of residence, and that the market contained a large resident population by which industries were carried on as well as shops. With certain wares, such as milk, honey, wood, spices, mercery, salt-fish, poultry, meat, and herbs, there was no other industry than that of receiving, packing, and distributing. ”

“ Having examined every land title from Wellingsley to Cold Spring, and found no mention of a market anywhere except under the town house, I am satisfied that the basement of both the old and new building contained a market from 1722 to the time of its comparatively recent abandonment in 1858. The tradition therefore concerning the change of the entrance to admit of the establishment of a market probably refers, not to the present building, but to the old one in which a change of plan may have been made to admit of the establishment of a market in 1722. ”

“ From this we may gather that Bartholomew fair was in those days a great annual mart to which merchants used to come up from the various parts of the country, and perhaps from other countries, to make their wholesale purchases, just as some of the continental fairs still are. The object of the regulations was to prevent the holding of the retail market, by which, of course, the crowd of visitors was chiefly attracted; but the wholesale market was too indispensable to the general trade of the country to be interfered with. ”

“ In the crush are many ladies who would find their business facilitated by coming on a different day. But market-day is a tradition with all classes; even the gentry appear in greater numbers. If you go forth into the Market-place you will find it thronged with farmers. If you go into the Corn Hall or Exchange, where the corndealers have their stands, and where business in cereals and seeds is transacted; if you walk across to the auction yard for cattle, or to the horse depository, where an auction of horses is proceeding; everywhere you have to push your way through groups of agriculturists. ”

“ Every day the influx of merchants increased, till at last more came than the staff of the factory could deal with, and they camped outside the fort awaiting their turn to trade. Actually, a small native food market grew there to supply them. Kate had lowered the price the factory paid for every commodity, but still the bush merchants sold, and were only too glad of the chance. Times they felt were troublous; the shadow of the King of Okky hung over the steaming forests, and they wished to get what they could in European produce and be gone. ”

“ Drink led to ribald language and fighting, but the refreshment now taken is chiefly tea or coffee, and the general language and behaviour has improved. The fish-fags of Ned Ward’s time have disappeared, and the business is done smarter and quicker. As late as 1842 coaches would sometimes arrive at Billingsgate from Dover or Brighton, and so affect the market. The old circle from which dealers in their carts attended the market, included Windsor, St. Alban’s, Hertford, Romford, and other places within twenty-five miles. Railways have now enlarged the area of purchasers to an indefinite degree. ”

“ The necessities of these farmers were born of isolation; and the opportunities for barter and dicker with passing emigrants stirred the acquisitive spirit within them into vigorous action. The prices of their hitherto unsalable commodities went up to unheard-of figures, increasing in geometrical progression. But Captain Ranger, having created a market in the remote country places in Illinois for supplies of coffee, tea, calico, and unbleached cotton cloth, had prepared himself at Quincy with such commodities, and was able to adjust his trade somewhat to the law of supply and demand. ”

“ In Europe, the great public markets in the cities bring farmer and consumer closely together in many commodities, but in the United States the bulk of products are too far afield for this. The farmer must market through a long chain of manufacturers, brokers, jobbers and wholesalers with or without their own distribution system, who must establish a clientele of direct retailers ”

“ Finding the customary channels of home consumption falling off, our merchants were constrained, at all hazards, to send their goods abroad, and thence the great exportation, amounting in all to £73,000,000 of goods, accompanied by no profit, but by a loss of £19,000,000, as we showed in a former article on the subject, to the exporters. [8] Finding credit easy, and money easily got from the influence of California, they engaged largely in importations, and swelled our total imports, as Mr Newdegate has proved, to £112,000,000. ”

“ Now, my Lords, if the buying corn of the Pole, the Russian, or the Prussian, enable them to give high prices for our manufactures, why do not you give the same advantages to those nearer home? For my own part, I believe, after all, that the home market is our best resource, and that there we dispose of the greatest proportion of our manufactured articles. It has, and I think with truth, been stated, that two-thirds of the whole quantity of our manufactures are disposed of in this country. The whole of our woollen and the whole of our silk manufactures are consumed here ”

“ Later on all the stalls will be closed, but in the early morning the market is thronged. Every householder is then buying his or her provisions for the day, and the people crowd in thousands round the sellers. Everyone is bargaining and chaffing and laughing, both buyers and sellers; but both are very keen, too, on business.
The cloth and silk sellers, the large rice-merchants, and a few other traders, cannot carry on business sitting on a mat, nor can they carry their wares to and fro every day in a basket. ”

“ To protect ourselves from loss in our sales for London account we had to take from time to time an interest in the market and this made us dealers. To complete our sales we were compelled to import the material and thus became importers.
With the opening of the year 1889 we found ourselves possessed of fairly large capital and a firmly established credit with bankers. These facts, combined with the best facilities for doing the business, decided us to eliminate the brokerage phase entirely, except in our transactions with our speculative clients. ”